The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

A long time ago (at least, in web years), search engine optimization required specific targeting practices for each of the engines. For Hotbot, you'd need to place two repetitions of every keyword side-by-side in your meta keywords tag, while for Northern Light, a picture of at least one dancing baby in the bottom right-hand corner made all the difference

Nowadays, most SEO is done with the same set of search-friendliness and search targeting standards in mind. Using keywords intelligently without stuffing, making static, easily crawlable URLs, building content that people are likely to link to, and promoting sites through social, viral, and directory marketing are relatively consistent across the SEO field. And yet... many people still have questions and concerns about which engines they should target and why they perform better at some engines than others. With this post I want to answer some of these common concerns.

Which Search Engines Should I Target in My SEO Campaigns?

To figure out the answer, let's take a look at the current leading search engines (via SearchEngineLand):

With the big 3 (Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft) garnering a combined 95.5% of all searches in the US and the big 4 (with the addition of Ask.com) pulling in 99.4% of all searches, it's easy to see why virtually no effort is paid to smaller players. If you're receiving 1,000 visits each day from Google, spending time and effort on that 0.6% of small players has the potential to bring you maybe 10 extra daily visits.

As cut and dry as the answers here seem, there are exceptions. Certainly, in markets outside the US, the answers are different. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, most of Central & South America, Africa, & the Mid-East are all heavily Google-centric (with smaller inroads from Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Ask.com). In Asia, the story's a bit different, as in Russia. Here are some of the search share leaders in these other markets:

China - Baidu (Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft all had share here, but were re-directed to Baidu by the government on multiple occasions, helping to keep Baidu the leader)

Korea - Naver

Japan - Yahoo! (though Google is also highly relevant)

Russia - Yandex

Beyond the geographical markets, there are some valuable vertical search properties that aren't owned/controlled by the search giants in arenas like travel, shopping, and video. Newcomers have attempted to make inroads in blog search, news search, financial, and local search as well. SEO for these sites, however, is typically significantly different from the traditional practices for web search engines, so don't expect the same rules to apply.

All in all, the right answer is - the search engines that send valuable traffic. For now, that means Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, & Ask.com. What's more surprising for many newcomers is that SEO for each of these properties is remarkably similar in tactics and execution. Let's take a deeper look with the questions below.

What Do I Need to Do Differently to Reach Google vs. Yahoo! vs. MSN/Live?

Not much, honestly. The major engines are all, at this point, largely playing catch-up to Google's algorithm and optimizing for on-site search friendliness (spiderability, good keyword targeting, semantic markup, clean URLs, no duplicate content, etc.) is virtually identical for every engine. Even keyword usage, once the big differentiator (you used to hear "Yahoo! likes 3X as many keyword repetitions as Google" all the time on SEO forums), has largely fallen by the wayside, with the singular exception that MSN/Live does seem to love keyword-rich URLs and domain names.

From a targeting perspective, just concentrate on building great content, marketing it effectively to link savvy audiences, crafting a search-friendly website, and attracting as many links from as many diverse properties as possible. The engines are all chasing the same goals of relevance, so think like a search engineer and build the kind of site they'd be thrilled to see ranking in their indices, then market the hell out of it :-)

Why am I Ranking Well at Google, but Not at Yahoo! or MSN?

I think this is probably the most common of the questions in this post, and to be perfectly honest, no one can say for certain. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN/Live all utilize different indices of the web and different ranking algorithms. This means that results between the three will, necessarily, have variance.

However, I'd be a pretty mean guy if I didn't at least provide some guidance, so here's my honest opinions on the subject. If you're ranking well at Google, but not at Yahoo! or MSN/Live, one of these may be to blame:

Google relies heavily on a trust and domain authority based algorithm, meaning that a barely optimized, poorly linked-to URL on a heavily trusted, powerful domain will probably do much better in Google than the other engines. If your content isn't highly targeted (lots of keyword usage and many external links), but it's sitting on a powerful domain, this could be why you're seeing over-representation in Google.

Google has the freshest index and the best ability to find new links quickly and count them. If you've released content recently or if many pages have recently linked to yours, this could be a big reason why you're outperforming Yahoo! and MSN/Live with your rankings at Google.

Google rewards a few very high quality, trusted links over many lower value links and thus, you'll frequently see pages and sites in Google's rankings because they've won out through the value Google places in their sparse but more trusted link profile.

Why am I Ranking Well at Yahoo! or MSN, But Not at Google?

As with the above, it's impossible to say for certain, but once again, I'll give my personal opinions:

Yahoo! is not as good as Google is at identifying and discounting so-called "manipulative" linking. Paid links, link farms, reciprocal links, and even FFA links (like blog comment spam and guestbook spam) will still sometimes provide value in Yahoo!, but rarely do in Google.

MSN/Live is still way behind even Yahoo! at catching manipulative links and thus, many of their more commercially focused results (and plenty of non-commercial results) are filled with sites and pages propped up by links that Google simply won't count.

Google still employs a series of algorithmic effects that mimic a "sandbox" of sorts. This means that new domains launched at Google or old domains moving their content to new sites often run into trouble ranking for what they "deserve" under the normal Google algorithm. This effect is much less strong than it was 2-3 years ago, but is certainly still around. In fact, last week, a good friend's site just "broke out of the box" in one of the best recent examples I've seen of the sandbox effect lifting.

Google's the most "suspicious" of the engines, so if you've been overly aggressive in link growth, even through no fault of your own, Google will sometimes penalize or devalue your links, at least temporarily. I see this most often with anchor text issues, where a particular site's backlinks all share the exact same anchor text, but other "patterns" can also trigger Google's raised eyebrow.

Why Doesn't My Site Rank at Ask.com?

Ask.com employs a very different algorithm to the other major search engines. While Google, Yahoo!, & MSN/Live all use global popularity (the link equity built to a site by all the other sites that link to it on the web), Ask.com relies on local popularity, which only counts link equity from other topically-relevant sites in that site's niche.

If you imagine the Internet as a model of the Earth, Google, Yahoo!, & MSN/Live are essentially saying that votes from anywhere on the planet count towards a page's ranking. Ask.com takes a different view and feels that only votes coming from your local town or county count towards your rankings.

This means that with Ask.com, you'll need a very different set of links to rank well than at Google, Yahoo!, or MSN/Live.

Aren't There Any Other Engines I Should Worry About?

Other than the aforementioned market leaders in other geographies and any relevant vertical search engines, the answer is "not really." Altavista, Dogpile, Hotbot, Lycos, and the like simply don't provide traffic levels that make them worthy of a lot of effort, and their algorithms tend to mimic the major engines anyway.

However, in the future, this may change. Startup engines like Wikia, Cuill, Powerset, and even Mahalo are trying to chip into the market leaders and 2-4 years from now, there may be several Ask.com or even MSN/Live sized competitors worthy of more attention.

Hopefully, this post will help you and your nervous clients to get some closure on these pesky issues. As always, comments are greatly appreciated!

UPDATE: Nick Wilsdon pointed out in the Sphinn thread on this post that there are many other countries (like Iceland, the Czech Republic, and Estonia) where other search engines are dominant market players. The global search report from 2007 (warning - PDF) covers these in-depth.

While the crux of this post dealt with the factors of ranking well in each of the major engines, I wanted to focus on the title of the post.

There are a few reasons, outside of basic SEO tactics, that have caused me to drop engine specific SEO steps:

What's good for Google is probably good for all of them - while you pointed out the differences, I see the other engines trying to play "catch up" so if you continue to rank well for Google, you probably will watch your other engine rankings climb as well.

Depending on niche, 1 engine is all that matters - depending on the niche and the demographic you are trying to attract, ranking well in either Google or Yahoo! (and not both) is probably a better approach than spending resources on both.

Cost/Benefit ratio - as Google continues to dominate the search market share and knowing that a SEO's job is really never done (linkbuilding is a task with no ending), you really have to spend your timely wisely when spending your time vs. the increased ranking/traffic from secondary search engines.

Fear - there are some sites that I fear "breaking something that isn't broken" to increase potential traffic from secondary engines. Why risk "perfect", #1 Google rankings for an increased rank in Yahoo!?

As a follow up article to this one, I would love to read and see some solid numbers on the conversion rates from different engines for different niches. I think that type of article would be a fantastic read.

Great post but one key thing you missed about Yahoo! is their continued use of paid inclusion - something that heavily affects the results of certain queries.

Consider the differences in results on Google and Yahoo! for the query "New York City hotel." At least four and up to six of the listings on Yahoo's first page of results look to be from their SSP program (a year ago it was possible to be sure by the linking URLs, but Yahoo! has closed that detection method). I won't name which of the listings are suspect but a quick glance at their linking profiles and on-page/site optimization makes them fairly easy to recognize.

While Yahoo! swears that the program is just a 'backdoor' into the index and that the pages are subjected to the same algorithm that the pages they find through spidering or sitemap files are, most people that have participated in the program can testify that a previously indexed page languishing in Yahoo's results will get an immediate lift if resubmitted via paid inclusion.

Adam - I've heard the rumor as well, but haven't done the testing necessary to prove it to myself. Some people have told me that it's more like pushing your pages from supplemental to full index at Google, so if you have a lot of content that's on a good domain, but just doesn't have enough juice, paid inclusion can help out.

It's interesting that we no longer have to target individual engines. The first company I got a job with in '97-'99 would target different doorway pages for each engine and then submit each version to different engines. You'd have like 7 different index pages w/ different formatting:

index.html

index_altavista.html

index_hotbot.html

etc.etc.

I'm have to say I'm really glad that didn't become a necessary facet of web design. Now you can really be focused on good content over manipulation and seo is able to come from a dark art to a legitimate and natural marketing technique.

@Adam Yahoo greatly favors URLs that are submitted through their PI program. I've had a feed "accidentally" go down and lost rankings only to regain them a few days later when the feed was corrected. The feed lets you stuff keywords like the way people used to stuff web pages back in the 90's.

Figuring out who is paying and who isn't is still often possible, but you need to poke around a bit. For example, if a URL is "natural" you shouldn't see tracking parameters.

Marios, good point on the tracking parameters but there are many instances where pages exist solely for the PI program so tracking parameters aren't necessary. Also, many sites use tracking redirects so plenty of 'clean' URLs are still going to be part of a feed.

And yeah, PI is basically a way to cloak your site legally...assuming you are willing to pay Yahoo! for the right to do so.

As others have already mentioned this is a great refresher for those wondering about splitting their SEO efforts beyond big G. Despite the low but not insignificant Yahoo and Microsoft share a common conclusion in the comments is "I am doing the right thing already only focusing on google. Why bother with the others?".

Perhaps one reason to bother with the others is that it may be one way of reducing google's stranglehold on search. If SEOs only worry about optimising for one SE are we actively (and artificially?) reinforcing that one SE above the others? Should we take some of the blame for Gs market dominance and does it really matter?

Nice post! I get over 1,000 visits a day but about 5 from Yahoo and MSN combined. I actually see about as much traffic from Ask as Yahoo/MSN.

I've considered spending more time experimenting to try to increase my Yahoo/MSN traffic but wonder if it'll pay off. Based on this post, my guess is I don't have enough inbound links. The ones I do have are very niche focused which may be why I do better with Google. I also haven't done much with META tags because I've heard they don't carry much weight any more. Maybe that is less true with Yahoo/MSN.

It depends which meta tags you use. Lanuage, region etc are good for usability (and I think local results), while the meta description tag has definatelyt helped with my Yahoo results - aligning it to the major keywords.

The reasoning I use is if you had a page on "blue widgets" wouldnt your description HAVE to say that the page is about "blue widgets" in one way or the other?

Nice roundup Rand. The most telling thing here is that 90% of your advice is about links. I guess this is nothing new, but these days I am feeling that that 95% of my effort for clients should be in the linkbuilding area. 301ing dupe URLs just doesn't seem to have the same satisying results it used to. Onpage stuff still seems important - tweaking keywords and internal links - but nothing seems to beat a good inbound link.

It would seem to me that you should still optimize for individual search engines because your primary focus should be to "one up" the most authoritative competitive sites at the top of each SE's SERPs.

Therefore, optimizing for a specific SE is actually a byproduct of focusing on what you need to do to beat your competitor, which is sometimes the same and sometimes different - depending on the keywords you're targeting.

K, I just did a quick search on all three major engines for "target individual search engines"

Google, 27.8 million results, this post was number 1

Yahoo, 7.2 million results, this post was number 1

Live, 4.7 million results, post not in the top 50.

Yahoo and Live Multiplied barely equal Google, thats why I think Google has so much of the search market, and why generally sites perform better in Google. Google's index is alot more filled in, and the algorithm is able to make a better choice for the results.

Maybe I'm just blowing smoke out my arse. But for now, I just work on optimizing and ranking well in Google.

What's sad is that for every good post like this that actually tells it plain and really help, benefit, an educate someone researching SEO, there are 100 other charlatans speaking lies, half truths, and being blind leading the blind.

And what gets me frustrated are those who wont listen or who insist that they know when they dont.

I think this is the best post about comparing major search engine giant, but still very specific and local search engine can be successful, like search engine only for mumbai city, providing every info but google can provide general information.

If anyone want to know what specific Search Engines rank better for which country you could always go to Alexa and check it out. When I have to taget my SEO efforts for my pages I always watch first for which country im aiming for and then I decide what is the best way to reach my potential customers via search engines. Great post Rand I listen something about it in an SMN on february 12th.

Most SEOs today are focusing only at Google bec. of the fact that it is at the lead among the others. But i think that it's still best for a site to target the different SEs indivudually bec. they can still provide us traffic/hits.

Man, things sure have changed back when I was first doing SEM. Google wasn't even in existence, and you had to pay attention to all of the search engines, but each of them contributed to the others' results. We submitted to individual search engines, and Yahoo was starting to charge for submissions, but you could still get in through one of their results providers.

Great post. Nice to see what's been going on in the industry since I've been away.

I dont think that would olve your problem straight away - an old (circa 2004) belief was the core diff between Yahoo and google was that Yahoo was more concerned with onsite factors (such as proper use of keywords in text), while Google on more offsite (such as links).

To some extent I believe this is still a case, a strong (keyword rich) URL, with the correct title tags, and solid use of keywords in content as well as h tags may balance the difference between large numbers of anchor text links for a competitor and your own small site.

However, a strong combop of both, proper use of keywords and backlinks would help a site in both Yahoo and MSN.

Funny thing is, one of my micro sites that was referring huge levels of traffic from Yahoo, got bumped from page 1 to page 2, while in google it was on page 4 and got shot up to page 1... increase in traffic was minimal...

Very helpful information about the SE differences Rand. It helps both the SEO and the Client to know these details when in the SEO business. Here in Greece, we focus mainly on Google and sometimes Live, since Yahoo! and Ask don’t do local searches unless the search query is properly parameterized, something that an average user just doesn’t do.

In most of the regions, Google is by far the most dominating index. In fact, so dominating that many companies chose to completely ignore the focus on anything else. At markets where it seems Google deliver +90% of the visitors I understand why companies chose to just do Google.

One quite possible factor for ranking discrepancy on different search engines is how these search engines treat your links from directory sites...Google tends to raise his eye brow on sites with too many backlinks from directory websites simply coz they have been abused so much in the recent past.

Now You might get away with links from crap directories in case of yahoo and MSN but Google's algos are far more efficient in finding and discounting links coming from these crap directories.... So links from junk directories might rank you on no.1 on Yahoo n MSN, while Google might not even consider you in its top 50 spot with such a link profile...

Excellent summary Rand - gracias. One thing I'd be curious to know with regards to link building is how each of the major SEs weight .gov and .edu links. Also, does anyone have any thoughts on Web sites like RealEduLinks.com that offer to sell links from trusted .EDU sites. How does that work? Is it ethical? Legit?

Rand, great post. It really comes handy to have a perspective on this issue (ranking well in Google, but not in other SE´s). I actually have this problem with my sites, I rank "well" in Google and MSN (honestly my sites rank better in Msn than Google) but then they rank on the 2nd or 3rd SERP in Yahoo, even though Yahoo shows more links to my sites than Google Webmaster. So, what I´m trying to do now, is to try to get links from My Topic Related Sites than rank well in Yahoo. I don´t know if its going to work, but I´m trying. I have also noticed that Yahoo´s 4th and 5th result in my Field are not the same ones than the 4th and 5th results in Google.

Hey Mexseofan,It looks like perhaps you thumbed me down for the comment I made and I wanted to make sure that you understand I was not intending to be disrespectful. My comment was from a line in the movie Silence of The Lambs. There is one scene where the lead character (Hanibal Lecter), has a mask on that is similar to the picture you are using as your avatar. I found it to be an interesting and memorable avatar - that's all.

What are your thoughts on the theory that more cross-linking in the meat of the content sections of a page (versus breadcrumbs, site navigation, etc.) will be considerably more powerful for Yahoo! (almost required for Yahoo!) versus Google?

This theory is something I started to play around with while at OneCall.com but never had a chance to finish the testing aspect of it.

Another question has to do with shingling . . . don't the different engines shingle content differently? Meaning that were you put a link in association to keyphrases in order to cause an association. Meaning that some engines are more picky about only associating terms and links that are within a specific <div> or specific <table> or specific <td> to one another . . . where other engines are more liberal with content and there association to other content or links whether or not it is in the same <div>, <table>, <td> etc.?

I still feel there is a difference between Yahoo! and Google. I don't pay much attention to MSN/Live or Ask yet though. However, 15% to 20% from Yahoo! is important to me especially since Yahoo! converts noticeably better.

I'm not sure about the specifics you mentioned with link and text locations on the page, but I have certainly seen that Google seems to do a better job of parsing meaning, intent and keywords out of uncommon language usage - they're certainly ahead when it comes to ID'ing synonymity and colloquailisms, too.

I have seen this strategy work for a site I used to help out with on ages ago - on both Yahoo and Google (PM me if you want a link to it) They dominated the SERPs for so many keyword variations, that the site picked up authourity and thousands of people linked to it. They still do it and still dominate SERPs, although in content linking may now not be the only factor influencing their positions.

As for shingling - not sure have come across the term before, but I do see footer div links and nav div links being discounted in their over all effect - while the links in lists seem to be picked up quicker...

Great Post! I agree with Papaspyropoulos about making it simple for both SEOs and Clients alike.

With regards to Yahoo PI -- I have used it in the past and my findings are that it works best for companies that cannot implement the SEO recommendations you make for them.

Some Fortune 500 companies have so much red tape that it takes them at least 6 months to implement page recommendations. In their case, using Yahoo PI gives the SEO person control over the listing so you to change the titles/descriptions and keywords.

For what it's worth, adding Yahoo PI does NOT automatically include you in the top of their SERPs. Like everything else with SEO, even that takes time. It is simply a viable alternative for some companies.

excellent post Randy. And as some other fellows above, who are not living in the US, I must say that here in France, Google just takes about 90% of the market shares. So all my clients want to get a better ranking of this search engine, and do not really care about the 10%. We have enough work anyways trying to have those goods results on G, that we are not losing anytime on Yahoo or Live.

We have some local search engines as well, but they do not bring significant traffic, so why bother !?